Sea Change
by Alexandra Spar
Summary: Post MIB 2. Dreadful things are happening. I can't get reviews from here so please if you'd like to review, could you email me? thanks *grin*


**"That's** a very good question," said the man in the sunglasses, raising a small silver object that looked like a laser pointer, "and the answer to it is located right _here_."

Flash.

All around her, the people looked at each other as if somebody had just sucked out their brains, complete vacancy filling every pair of eyes she saw. The man put away his laser pointer and took off his sunglasses. For some reason Christine found herself regarding him with a credible imitation of the others' blank stares. He sighed, gaze sweeping across the small herd gathered in front of him. "All right," he said, "what you saw was a scene being filmed for a local movie. There were no aliens. Those were men in alien suits. The strange ray you saw was light from Venus reflecting off a thermocline caused by rising smog. Now I suggest you go about your business as usual." He coughed and put the sunglasses away in his pocket with an air of finality. The others were already dispersing, nodding to each other. "Movie," she heard one of them say. "Wow. Maybe I'm in it. Hey Mom, I'm in a movie."

The man, she noticed, was talking on a cell phone, turned most of the way away from her, and she took the opportunity to give him a long considering stare. Whatever had just happened was quite possibly the strangest thing she had ever seen.

He was fascinating. He looked dead tired, lines criscrossing his face, his eyes deeply shadowed, but he also looked dangerous. Like a very well-maintained weapon. She put him in his mid-fifties, but it was hard to tell; the way he moved belonged to a much younger man. He had big hands, she noticed. Big, square hands.

It occured to her to plaster a vague smile on her face and walk away as if she had just seen someone making a movie, not as if she had just seen two large green aliens beating each other up on the streets of New York. Not like that was that much of a stretch. She lit a cigarette, watching them.

The man and his companion, a much younger black man, both dressed identically in black suits, got into their big black LTD and drove away. Chris ducked into a local bar and downed two scotches one after the other before heading home. She wanted to find out what it was she apparently had not missed.

"Hey, Kay. Does the flashy thing work on everyone?"

"Yes. Why?"

"No reason," said Jay. He was thinking of the blonde woman who had been giving Kay the eye as they left. "You ever flashy-thinged me?"

"No."

"I ain't playing with you, Kay, have you ever flashy-thinged me?"

"No." Kay was looking impassive. It was something he did well. Jay had a feeling he was lying, but there was no way of getting him to admit it. 

"So what were those two dudes fighting about?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Turf wars, Slick," said Kay, pulling the LTD to a stop outside headquarters. "Both the Garengi and the Vurlans want the South Bronx. They tend to lose their disguise when they get riled up."

"Not too subtle, two eight-foot tall green blob things beating each other up."

"They're not good at subtle." Kay got out, tossing the keys to a lackey who had magically appeared beside the car, and stalked on into the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority building. Jay followed, more slowly. Kay had never been what he'd call the talkative type, but today he was being even more terse than usual. Jay wondered vaguely if he'd had some bad news or something. Of course, he wouldn't mention it. You didn't talk to Kay about stuff like that. He gave you the patented Kay Look.

Up in Zed's office, everything seemed normal. They sat down in the cheesy sixties egg-chairs and waited for him to finish briefing an agent in the field—a cornfield, apparently, somewhere in the Midwest, complete with crop circles. "This is their last warning," Zed was telling the agent. "Farmers are getting mighty tired of having their corn ruined by some teenage-delinquent Iitrian's graffiti. One more of these and they get banned from the planet for a year."

Jay watched, interested. He'd seen the Discovery Channel programs about crop circles, how they were made by some math geeks with a two-by-four and a bit of rope, but he'd always suspected the obvious alien explanation was the right one, even before he'd joined MIB. Funny how some of your hunches work out. He grinned at the image on Zed's screen—it looked _hot_ out there in that cornfield, and he knew from experience that the trademark black suits weren't designed for intemperate weather. 

Kay coughed and leaned forward into the comlink's view. "Enn," he said, "tell them if they step out of line you'll _iikraal_ their _d'braaliivik ha'akri_."

Agent Enn went pink, then nodded. "Thanks." Zed cut the connection and raised an eyebrow at his legendary agent.

Kay shrugged and coughed again. "Nothing you don't hear in Brooklyn three or four times a day. What've you got for us, boss?"

Zed grimaced. "The usual. Someone smuggling Bernuzian crack through standard interstellar transport lines and stopping off here to sell; we got an unlicensed nematopod loose in Manhattan; a trash barge operator says he was menaced by large flying globes of light around four o'clock this morning." He wiggled his fingers in a gesture which said clearly "and so on."

"Man," said Jay, disappointed, "nothing interesting."

Zed scowled at him. "What, you want another Kylothian on your hands?" Jay sobered, remembering entirely too well all that had happened when Serleena came to Earth. And Laura left.

The two older men were talking about the Garengi-Vurlan gang war that had been dragging on for months in the South Bronx. "I feel like I'm trying to instill peace in the goddamn Middle East," Zed sighed. "Every time you think they've agreed on the borders one of them steps over into someone else's pizza parlor or parks their car in someone else's space, and we have to go in with a cleanup crew."

"Tell me about it," said Kay. "This is the third fight we've had to break up this week. I'm getting tired of playing U.N." He coughed.

"I'll have Bee and Dee deal with the next one. Why don't you and Junior go check out the flying globes of light thing?"

Jay scowled again. He hated being called Junior. "Man's probably just drunk, Zed. See all kinds of crazy stuff in that kind of job."

"Or," said Kay mildly, "we could have another Erlian sighting out of the third-star zone, which would probably mean a major interstellar situation." He got up, impassive as always. "C'mon, kid, we got work to do."

Shaking his head, Jay followed him out. No matter how much he learned, how many hours of study he put in, hitting the MIB manuals and guidebooks, Kay always knew it first, and knew it better. If he didn't, he wouldn't be Kay. Jay wondered how he'd stayed sane all those years in the post office, and then realized what he'd just thought—and decided not to think along those lines again. Postal workers were bad enough; postal workers with Noisy Crickets were in the realm of nightmare. And Kay had never really struck him as anything but disgruntled.

Chris was disgusted with herself, but it was the only option left. She had spent the morning in the University library, researching all the possible explanations for what she had seen, and had finally been forced to return to her apartment and log on to UFONet, a thing which she had never done before and hoped never to do again. _Just let me understand what I saw_, she thought, _and I'll quit thinking about it. Just let me find an explanation._

Immediately the words "men in black" jumped out at her from the website, claiming that these individuals were paid by "the government" to hush up unexplained phenomena, and that they were connected with the famous black helicopters and the mysterious big black cars. Chris snorted. There couldn't possibly be a government agency designed specifically to make people not believe in aliens—people would believe in aliens no matter what, especially with performances like this morning's. But what the hell had that performance been about with the flashing laser pointer and the lousy explanation for what they had seen? It lent a bit of credence to the hushing-up conspiracy theory.

She sighed and poured herself a drink, transferring her cigarette to the other hand. The doctors had told her not to drink, or smoke, or do anything particularly interesting for a few months—and they had warned her about metal detectors and the necessity of staying away from big electromagnets. Her hair had grown back, mostly, but she kept it cut boy-short for the convenience. Absently she raised a hand to her head and traced the low scar, feeling the plate in her skull. _Maybe it's making me crazy,_ she thought. _Crazy lady with a head screwed together with bits of steel thinking she sees aliens. Right._

But there were the other things. The way she could feel peoples' moods before they walked in the room, or anticipate exactly, word for word, what they were about to say. The way she could sometimes see a cheating student's guilt like a red neon arrow pointing at his or her test paper. There was the cleaning lady at the University who seemed to have scales occasionally, little pearlescent dark-brown scales creeping up her arms and plating the sides of her neck. And there had been something recently..........something big......the Statue of Liberty? Fireworks? She thought she could remember something like a little star flying fast upwards into the night and things exploding all around the harbor in the dark, and a sense of unutterable loss.

She shook her head. _Need to go for a walk or something. Do normal things._

Kay pulled the LTD up beside the dock. They'd had some issues with Jay's Mercedes—mostly based on the fact that it had the acceleration of a Space Shuttle and the braking capacity of a '92 Ford Escort—and it was in the MIB shop for repair. Meanwhile, Kay's precious LTD was doing temp duty. Jay found he didn't much mind being relegated to the passenger seat; he'd never liked driving the agency's motor-pool cars. He always felt like a cross between a pimp and a doddering old man. His Mercedes was much more his style. Until it—she—was back in action, he was content to ride shotgun with Kay. 

They got out, slowly, to give the guys in the garbage-transport office the wrong impression. Jay had found that this was an important part of the job—giving people time to look them over and make their conclusions before they started talking. He followed Kay to the squat little building on the edge of the quay, aware that he would have to take the role the older man handed to him, paying attention to whatever name he was given. _What's it gonna be this time?_ he thought. _Special Agent Gray? I've been Black and White. _

Kay coughed and opened the door, flipping open a badge. "Hi, folks. I'm Special Agent Marston and this is Special Agent Mann. We're here to investigate the alleged event earlier this morning."

_Mann,_ thought Jay absently. _Losing our creativity, are we?_ He stepped forward to take up position beside Kay, silent and dangerous-looking in his unremarkable black suit. 

The fattest of the three men who faced them stood up. "Man, am I glad to see you," he said in a thick Southern accent. "Shit about to frightened the life outta me. C'mon back and I'll show y'all where it happened."

Silently Jay and Kay followed him, striding through the back rooms of the little building as if they had all the authority in the world—which, Jay remembered, they did. The bargeman opened the back door and ushered them out onto the quay, redolent of ripe summer garbage and the normal thick smell of New York Harbor. "She's right over there," he said, waving toward a barge tied up alongside the dock. "I was just sittin in the cabin havin' me a cup of coffee when all at once these big balls of light started floatin' over the trash, zoomin' back and forth like they was lookin' for something."

Kay nodded tersely and stepped toward the barge. "What color were these lights?" he demanded.

"Kinda whitish," said the bargeman. "Blue around the--------"

"Around the outside, with a core of brilliant white?" Kay finished. 

"........Yeah," said the bargeman.

Jay stepped in. "Was there any kind of noise? 

"Well, there was a kind of hum, I guess," said their subject. "Like a ...._mmmmmmmmmmmm._"

Kay nodded towards Jay. "Go check it out, Slick." He turned to the bargeman, taking out a notebook, and appeared to write down the particulars of what the man was saying. Jay sighed and stepped onto the boat, wrinkling his nose at the stench, and took out an ionic trace detector, sweeping it from side to side over the deck. Nothing registered. He walked forward a little, still waving his device, and was almost surprised enough to say something when the needle suddenly jumped into the red. He squinted at the reading. Something big—something _massive_—had come very close to this barge within the past twenty-four hours. Something with a cloaking device powerful enough to hide it from the man driving the boat, except for its running lights, which (if he remembered his MIB manuals) would have shown up as two gigantic blue-white circles, hovering low over the target. He snapped the ionic detector shut and made his way back to the other two. Whoever it had been wasn't all that bright if they'd cloaked themselves but hadn't turned off the lights.

"So, well, my missus said she wasn't happy about me working these long hours and all," the bargeman was saying. "She said she'd stay with her mamma in North Carolina while I found another job."

"I see," Kay said and coughed. "Well, Mr. Halwell, I think I have the answer to your questions right here." He pulled out the neuralyzer and slipped his Ray-Bans on, as Jay followed suit. The little device flashed. "You were having a nice cup of coffee," he continued, managing to look both stern and bored at the same time, "and you noticed some odd flashes of light coming from nearby, which you found to be the result of local kids letting off firecrackers from a motorboat."

"Yeah," Jay added, "and your wife's really just looking for some more communication in your marriage. Go down to North Carolina and take her out to dinner and tell her how much you love her." Kay didn't roll his eyes at this; he was used to Jay's little additions to his post-neuralyzer memory inserts, generally having to do with love and sweetness and light. He did wonder for a moment what the kid had been telling people while he was out of Kay's supervision. _You got taken out to dinner by a millionaire and had too much Dom Perignon and that's why you don't remember the pink slime taking over the pneumatic subway system_?

Mr. Halwell blinked. "Yeah," he said. "Firecrackers. When's the next Greyhound going south?"

On the way back they said very little beyond the obligatory report to Zed about what they'd found and what they'd told the civilians. Jay wondered what exactly a full-size Erlian scout craft was doing in the New York harbor area, but he figured he'd table that until the old guys made their statements. Like Kay had said, the Erlians weren't allowed on Earth—it was three planets out of zone for them, and unless they had some kind of special travel visa, they weren't supposed to be there at all. Especially not swooping around looking at garbage. What did they think they'd find? Someone's mistakenly-discarded diamond necklace? A hundred-dollar bill forgotten in an old purse?

Or something bigger?

Jay knew, better than most, that just because something was important didn't mean it wasn't very very small. Two separate incidents had proved that to him—his first case with Kay, involving a galaxy roughly the size of a shooter marble, and his first case with the reinstated, out-of-retirement Kay, involving the Light of Zartha.

He cut off the train of thought. It wasn't a pleasant one.

Kay still had his sunglasses on. He had been driving with, for him, more than usual care—not running many yellow lights, making sure to signal long before turning, and keeping the big Ford's speed below sixty. Jay wondered what was up. Maybe it had something to do with why he was being so quiet. 

His partner coughed, muffling it in his fist, and abruptly slotted an 8-track cassette into the dash slot. Jay had often wondered why Kay hadn't had the sound system updated, but had never quite had the nerve to ask. His own lovely Mercedes had a six-CD changer with nuclear subwoofers hidden behind the back seats. Elvis filled the LTD with how they ain't never caught a rabbit and they weren't no friends of his. 

"Hey," Jay said after a few more miles. "You okay?"

Kay didn't even look at him. "Fine."

Shot down. As usual. He turned back to the road, watching the traffic. Kay coughed again, changing down to stop for a light, and flicked a glance at him. "Kid," he said. "The next few days could be kind of rough."

Jay blinked. Kay's face was utterly blank, his dark eyes hidden behind the regulation Ray-Bans, but he saw the older man was sweating. "What's going on?" he said, sounding more like a whiny child than he would have liked. "What's up with all this mystery shit with the Erlians? I mean, can't we just find them and say get the hell offa Earth before some bad shit happens to them?"

"Not that simple, Slick," Kay said, and coughed. "The Erlians have been making waves in the Galactic Congress—a kind of interstellar U.N. They want to expand their restricted zone."

"Why? What's out there that they want?"

"Lots of things." Kay stopped to let a pair of Byrengai on a bicycle built for two cross the road. "Earth is kind of like an Iraqi oil well to them. We've got oxygen, photosynthetic plants, and molybdenum. The moly is what they really want, but they can find it on other planets in their zone. I don't know why exactly they want Terran moly, but I think that's what they're here for."

Jay frowned. "But aren't they in deep shit with the Galactic Whatever for going out of zone?"

"That's the point, tiger. They seem to have stopped paying any attention to the Congress. Which means that any of their actions out of zone can be seen as a hostile act by any of the Congress planets. And if that happens, and if they're here, then Earth is ground zero." He coughed again, harder. "This is why they sent us out to that barge."

"What, they think we're the most expendable?"

"No," said Kay, "they think that we're the best. Come on, we're here." He'd pulled the LTD to a stop outside a totally uninteresting shopping row in East Village—and for that area, "totally uninteresting" was saying something. People in blue and purple fright wigs were lounging around on the front steps of their houses, smoking illegal substances and displaying their tattoos to one another. A pair of androgynous goths crossed the road, black vinyl capes fluttering behind them. Kay and Jay looked out of place—but then, in the East Village, anything went. About ninety percent of the people on the streets of this area were not originally from New York, or even from this planet. 

"Where?" Jay asked, hating to be the fall guy. Kay merely motioned him to follow and climbed the steps to No. 68. He rapped on the door in an intricate rhythm that Jay thought might be Morse code, and waited, coughing a little.

After a few minutes the door opened to reveal a musty hallway and a woman who made Jay's jaw drop as if he'd just seen Lady Godiva riding past on a woolly mammoth while singing "Hound Dog." She was about five feet tall and couldn't weigh more than about ninety pounds, and a lot of that was hair—white hair, snow-colored, falling past her hips almost to the ground. She wore a pale gauze dress that made her bluish skin seem to glow in the dim light, and her face was sharp and delicate, with a pallid, pointed beauty that made him think of fairy stories. Her eyes had vertical slit pupils like a cat's, which for some reason didn't bother Jay at all; he could've looked into those yellow-green eyes all day.

"Kay, luv," said this vision, in a thick Cockney accent. "Long time, baby. Come in." She gave Jay the once-over. "Who's your friend?"

"My partner," said Kay, a little roughly. "Agent Jay, meet Millius."

They sat in Millius's living room on a white leather couch that wouldn't have looked out of place in Zed's office, and drank Laphroaig from crystal glasses older than Kay was. "They want the moly," she said, lying upside down on a vintage Steinway. "Definitely the moly. There're traces of zirconium and americium in it that make it far more useful than, say, Betelgeusian molybdenum. But I don't know why the hell they'd risk starting interstellar war over it."

Kay coughed. "As far as I can see, they don't give a damn about the Galactic Congress and its constituents. They've got to be dumber than we thought if they think they'll get away with this."

"Or if they think Earth will," said Millius crossly. "I like this planet, Kay, I don't want to see it destroyed in some idiotic turf war. You said they'd buzzed a garbage barge this morning?"

"Yeah," Jay cut in, wanting to look smart, "and left one hell of an ion trail—but they left their running lights on and scared the shit out of some poor dumb bargeman."

Millius sighed. "Typical. D'you have the readings?"

Jay got up happily and handed her the ionic tracer. She took it delicately with one six-fingered hand and called up the readings from the barge; her cat eyes widened. "Holy shit," she said. "This isn't a scout ship. This is a _mining_ ship. They're already here."

Kay started to say something, but began to cough instead, hard. Both Millius and Jay turned to look at him, and she slid off her piano and crossed the room to him, but the fit was over before she could reach him. "Kay," she said. "You all right?"

He nodded, clearing his throat. "Allergies," he said, and Jay only just stopped himself from answering _bullshit_, because he personally had looked over Kay's physicals when he reentered the agency, and he knew the older man had no allergies whatsoever. Nevertheless, Millius was still there beside him, looking (if possible) even more lovely with the little concerned lines around her brow and mouth. Kay didn't give her a chance to voice that concern. "A mining ship," he said. "How big?"

Millius didn't look happy. "About three times the length of a football field," she said. "Give or take a few yards. And they're gonna need to land it to refuel."

"What do they use as fuel?" Jay wanted to know.

"H2O," Millius said simply. "Thus the harbor. They must've been checking out the barge because it was close to their possible landing sites, to see if it posed any danger. They don't know much about you."

"Us as in MIB?"

"You as in humans," said Millius with a little smile. "Kay, can I talk to you?"

Kay got up and followed her into the other room, leaving Jay to ponder the future of humanity and make himself another drink. He could hear them talking in low voices, and his partner's occasional deep cough.

He was concerned about this situation. Erlians drawing interstellar war to Earth was one thing; Erlians stealing Earth's resources in order to do so was another. He began to feel quite violently opposed to the whole Erlian question, and made himself a third drink.

In Millius's kitchen, Kay sat backwards on a cafe chair and scowled at his old friend. "You don't need to—" he began.

"I know I don't," she told him, turning from the cupboard with a glass of something pale-green and clear. "Drink that and shut up. I want to have a look at you."

"I'm fine. I'm a lot more concerned with the Erlians, as a matter of fact. There's something nasty going on."

Millius ignored this, putting the glass down on the table with a thump and beginning to run her translucent hands over his back. Her fingers tapered to points like claws; he could feel them through the MIB shirt, little pencil-points tracing his ribs. "Millius," he said, as authoritatively as he could. "Stop it. I don't need your concern, I need your expertise on behalf of the Earth, which may possibly be destroyed within the next week or so if we don't find and get rid of the Erlian miners."

"Interesting," said Millius thoughtfully, and Kay felt a strange shiver run through him as she did something to his back. "I don't know what it is. You can put your jacket back on and stop looking so persecuted. And drink that."

He drank it, mostly to get her to shut up, and was surprised to find that it eased the tightness in his chest. "What do you suggest we do?" he asked.

Millius sighed. "You have the technology; you track them down and you do this the hard way. Erlians don't understand anything else."

"Destruction?"

"I'm afraid so. We had some issues with them about fourteen hundred of your years ago. Diplomacy means nothing to them; they need a firm hand." Millius paused, thinking. "And they absolutely love 80s music. Really attracts them. Kind of like a UV light attracts bugs."

Kay got up, coughing. "Thanks," he said.

"I wish I could help," she sighed. "By the way, you're not driving."

"What?" He scowled. It was an excellent scowl; it had served him well. Millius ignored it blandly. 

"Not after drinking that. See if you can walk a straight line."

Kay realized he did feel unsteady. "Damn you," he said.

"You're welcome, darling." Millius sighed. "Come on, your young partner's probably had time to get the wrong idea by now."

When Kay and Millius returned, Jay was on his fourth and quite certain about what they should do. "We," he said self-importantly, "gotta stop them."

Millius squinted at him. Kay cracked a smile. "Come on, Slick," he said. "Back to headquarters. Zed will give the orders about this situation, not you."

He got up, nodding. "Time to bust some alien ass."

"Not quite what the boss would say, but you got the right idea." Kay flipped him the keys to the LTD. Jay caught them automatically, then stared. His partner gave him the impassive look.

"You want me to drive," he said, unable to believe this. He'd never done the driving while Kay was around, except that one time in the Mercedes at hyperspeed, and that was only because Kay lacked the necessary Nintendo experience. "Are you _sure_?"

"Kay's a little tired," Millius cut in. "Go on, boys. You have to save the planet again."

Shaking his head, Jay led the way out to the LTD, which had carbon handprints on it again—some unlucky car thief had tried to force his way in and been fried by the anti-burglar electric-jolt system. He got into the driver's seat, frowning over at his partner, who was looking impassive again, sunglasses on, suit immaculate. "Kay."

"What?"

"You really okay, man? You don't look so hot."

"I'm fine, Slick. Drive."

He drove, but he wasn't able to stop himself glancing over at Kay every few blocks. Finally he said, "Who is she?"

"Millius?" Kay said. "She's a Martian. Don't you read the tutorials?"

Jay let that one pass. "So how come she knows so much about all of this?"

"She's a conscientious objector. Lives here because property values are better." Kay coughed. "She keeps an eye on things for me."

Jay grinned. "I see. I bet you don't mind keepin' an eye on her, either."

Kay said nothing, merely lying back in the seat. Now Jay was seriously worried. Normally his partner would have something snappy to say about any intimation that he was involved with his sexy alien female informers. He made a decision.

"You're going into medical when we get back," he said firmly. "You're acting weird."

Kay sat up a bit and took off his sunglasses. Jay noticed that he looked rather paler than usual. "I am _fine_, Jay," he said, giving him a Kay Look. "We follow procedure. We speak to Zed first and let him know about these developments, and then we go to research."

Jay badly wanted to counter him with _Screw that_, but he just didn't dare. Kay had a lot more pull in MIB than he did, and he didn't want to be labeled as a protocol violator, not now. He couldn't help scowling as he drove; it was infuriating to worry about someone who made it abundantly clear that he didn't want or accept help from anyone.

He found himself wondering vaguely about Kay's abortive marriage, and firmly concentrated on the road.

Chris was walking down Battery Drive when the black LTD pulled up. She glanced over at it, did a double-take, and kept walking for reasons she couldn't quite name. When she was behind a convenient tree, she turned and glanced back at the car. Sure enough, the same two men were getting out of it, the young handsome black one driving, the older one looking a bit rough. Both of them were in a hurry, and both of them had something important on their minds. She could feel it, kind of like the electric feeling in the air before a thunderstorm.

Without knowing quite why, she crept around the tree and behind a line of bushes to see where they were going. The building was labeled "Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority," and if these two were anything to do with New York transport, she, Chris, was the Queen of France. Funny how she'd never noticed the building before. It was just kind of there, like the Statue of Liberty or the big shiny mirror-fronted building down by Battery Park. 

_Maybe that's on purpose,_ she thought, and crept around the side of the building just in time to see the two men go in. On a stupid impulse she followed, just in time to see the doors of an elevator closing within the lobby. She squinted through the closing gap and saw a security guard reading _Mad_ and eating a hot dog. Nothing surprising there.

She turned from the doors and saw the LTD disappearing round the corner. _What the hell is in that building? Who are those men?_

She lit a cigarette and walked down to the park, wondering what the righteous hell she had stumbled onto.

After their briefing Jay was dismissed to the locker rooms. Nothing more was to be done tonight. He went reluctantly, wanting to know what Kay and Zed were discussing, what the plan was to combat the Erlians, and what the hell was up with Kay. He'd never seen the man sick, or out of control in any way. Nobody had. He'd asked the other agents. Kay was famous, among other things, for being totally, inhumanly controlled. Some of them thought he was a _Blade Runner_-type android. Those agents had never ridden upside down in the Queens Midtown Tunnel with Kay, however; it was one of the few times Jay had ever seen the older man smile.

Sang a pretty mean _Promised Land_, too.

He sighed, pulling his T-shirt over his head and putting on his tennis shoes. Nothing he could do about it. On his way home he looked for a liquor store that sold Laphroaig, but was disappointed.

Kay stood in front of the bathroom mirror in his tiny apartment in lower Manhattan, staring at his reflection. _Kid was right_, he thought, _you look like shit._

Must be a summer cold, he figured. People got those, right? He'd had a low ache in his chest for a couple days now, and a kind of sore itch in his throat. No doubt it'd go away, but it was annoying—and he tried to forget how solicitous Millius had been, back in the East Village. Not the sort of thing he wanted, or needed. Whatever had been in that green stuff she'd made him drink had certainly helped, but he didn't _need_ it. No, he was just fine. He'd shake it off in a couple of days and people would quit staring at him.

It'd been a week since he'd been out on that Harbor Patrol boat. Some report of a weird red mist over the Ellis Island area. Nothing to be seen once he got there, and nothing on any of his instruments. Just another wild goose chase. The sort of thing you got a lot of, in this job.

But there had been that weird moment, hadn't there, when he'd felt sick and dizzy and unsteady on his feet—so quickly over that none of the civilians had even noticed. He figured it was just one of those things that happens with stress, and he'd forgotten entirely about it until now. There was no way the two could be related.

God, he was tired. And he was thinking more about Elizabeth, and about Lauranna, than he really wanted to, these days. The episode with Millius hadn't helped one little bit; she'd jogged old memories out of the depths of his mind, memories which he didn't need or want.

He shrugged at his reflection, took a handful of painkillers, and went to bed.

Chris, back in her apartment, was watching the night change color. _Erlians_, she thought, dully, staring at the list she'd made. _Bernuzians, Iitrians, Vurlans, Naprasonians. Like I might say, Germans, Frenchmen, Spaniards. They're here. They're everywhere._

The cleaning woman in the University was, as far as she could make out, a heterozygous Naprasonian, without the skull ridges of the fullblood race. And she'd noticed, quite against her will, that the guy who sold her a foot-long that evening had had slit pupils. _Feriscian._ She didn't want to know, but it seemed impossible not to. There was so much evidence. The websites, the newspapers, the magazines, her own experience. Occam's Razor told her that the simplest explanation was probably the most accurate, and the simplest explanation was that, in fact, aliens walked among us. She shook her head, lighting a cigarette. 

So who the hell were those two guys in black suits? What was it about the older one, the tired-looking, fascinating one who she couldn't stop thinking of? And what was it she'd seen that morning that they didn't want her to?

She logged back onto the freak UFO websites and had another look.

2

**Agent** Elle was having a complicated morning. Not only were the third-quarter physical reports due, but she still hadn't managed to get some of the agents to even show up for an exam, and when they did show, she hardly had time to look them over before they were called out again on another case. Of course the agency's cases came first, but she was getting slowly inundated with paperwork, and she'd really appreciate it if she could get these goddamn reports done and filed before next quarter's were due. She'd moved from active Special Service duty to chief M. O. for the agency when Kay had returned—there had been some brief talk of her going back to her civilian duties as the deputy medical examiner for the five boroughs, but she'd decided she preferred it where she was. Fewer fat donut-centric cops and much more job interest.

She sat down behind her paper-heaped desk and pulled up the list of agents who still hadn't shown for their physicals. Not surprisingly, Kay was at the top of the list. Little things like quarterly exams couldn't stop the legendary Man in Black from doing his job, even if she was beginning to hear weird things about the way he was behaving. His partner Jay was much more of a good little agent, showing up on time to his appointment and answering all her questions without even an evasive look. Exciting sparks had flown between them when they first worked together, but they'd subsided into a kind of warm mutual regard—she'd saved his ass from getting eaten by a furious half-bug, and he'd shown her the MIB ropes. Kind of a trade-off. Still—sometimes she found herself watching him at work, remembering how it had been.

She got up again, after sending off pointed memos to all the agents on her list, and stalked down the hall to get some coffee. The worms were, as always, in residence, trading girl stories and reminiscences of the time they'd been heroically involved in the effort to get the Light of Zartha off the planet before it went nuclear.

"Hey, Elle," said Neeble 1, giving her what she assumed to be a lascivious grin. "How's it goin?"

"Eh," Elle shrugged. "Tell me you got some non-flavored coffee, guys, I can't stand that hazelnut shit that Zed keeps ordering."

One of the worms, possibly Neeble 2, poured her a cup. "Sumatra Mandheling," it said, grinning. "Cream?"

"Please." Elle leaned against the counter. "Seen anything of Kay lately?"

The worms gave an excited chorus of answers in a mixture of Vermararian and Esperanto, and she waved her hands for clarification. Mannix 2 smacked a couple of his friends into silence. "He was in here the other day," he said. "Looked kinda off."

"Off?" Elle repeated.

"You know, like he hadn't slept recently." There was another burst of mixed languages. "And he was bitching about this case he'd been sent on out in the harbor. Some red mist or something."

Elle started, almost spilling her coffee. "Red mist?"

Gleeble 1 shrugged. "That's what he said. Some report about red mist, but he didn't find anything."

"Huh," she said. 

"Huh," said Chris, putting down the Stephen King novel with a scowl. She'd seen the tabloid headline—_Mysterious Red Mist Blankets NY Harbor_—and ignored it, like she'd ignored the _Michael Jackson Reveals Alien Ancestry _and _Britney Spears Pregnant With Pope John Paul II's Baby_ stories. But the more she read about these things the more she had to admit there was a kind of coherence. Red mist or red mold growing on crops was one of the most common unexplained phenomena that made its way into the UFO pages. King's _Dreamcatcher_ took the idea a bit further. She wondered vaguely whether he knew something she didn't.

_Red mist over the harbor,_ she thought, _and green blobs fighting in the South Bronx. Is there a connection? _

She called in sick to the university—not that her students would give a damn, none of them showed up to class anyway on a day this nice—and put on some clothes. Maybe she'd walk around for a while before it got too hot. Maybe even go down to the harbor and see what she could see.

Elle caught Jay by the arm as he was coming out of the lockers. "Jay," she said. "You noticed anything weird about Kay recently?"

Jay blinked at her. "It's too damn early in the morning for questions," he said. "Lemme get some coffee. What do you mean, weird?"

Elle followed him to the coffee-room and watched as the worms exchanged high two-and-a-halfs with their secondary hero. "Like, out of character. I don't know. I think something might've happened to him."

Jay chugged his coffee down and held out the cup for a refill. "Well," he said, thinking, "he let me drive the LTD yesterday. And he was real quiet. I kinda thought maybe he didn't feel so good."

Elle squinted at him, rubbing her eyes. He was right, it _was_ too damn early. "He's due for his physical a week ago. When you see him can you make him come down to my office?"

Jay laughed a little. "Girl, you don't _make_ Kay do anything. I'll try."

Elle nodded. "Guess that's all I can ask for. You think he might be sick?"

"Maybe. He was coughing. Got a cold or something." His communicator beeped. "Oops, gotta go. Zed's calling." At the door, he turned and glanced back at her. "You think something's wrong?"

Elle sighed. "Might be. I don't know yet."

As it turned out, Kay was already in Zed's office by the time Jay got there, and joined Zed in a cool stare at the younger man. "Punctuality is a virtue," he said.

"Yeah, I'm sure. What's on the menu?"

Zed glanced at his screens. "You two are on the Erlian case. Send off some coded messages to their closest legal outpost, warning them the hell off, and see if there are any more reports of Erlian sightings. Then hunt them down and get them out of here."

Kay nodded. "Lethal force?"

"If necessary. I'd like to avoid too much bloodshed, but the Erlians are kind of dense. They may not pay attention to anything short of a Phaser or a Series 4."

Kay nodded again, face hard and impassive, and coughed. "Do we have any idea how many of them might be on-planet?"

"If it's a full-size mining ship—" Zed let the sentence hang. "You'll have backup, of course."

Jay frowned. "Can't we just, you know, wave our big shiny-ass guns at them and say "ease on out of here before something bad happens to you'?"

Both men turned to stare at him. "Five years in the service," Kay muttered, shaking his head. "Your problem is you don't read the books, Junior. Erlians don't _get_ threats. They understand physical force. That's about it. Oh, and they've got a weakness for 80s music."

Zed, deadpan, turned back to Kay. "You might want to pick up some Duran Duran tapes on your way out."

Jay scowled. Dealing with Kay in his present mood was bad enough; dealing with Kay in his present mood _while listening to Duran Duran_ wasn't something he felt he deserved. 

He didn't get a chance to argue. Kay coughed, rose, and gestured to him to follow. On their way down to the main hall and the equipment rooms, he remembered what Elle had said. "Hey, man. Elle wants you to go in for a physical."

Kay shrugged. "Later. We're busy."

"She says it's overdue."

"And I said we're busy. You prefer Duran Duran or Blondie?"

Jay shuddered, feeling in his pocket to make sure his Noisy Cricket was still there. The MIB didn't give their agents cyanide pills, but one shot from the Cricket would be enough to end all his pain if worst came to worst.

Kay was back in the driver's seat, still looking what Jay's mom would've called "peaky," and still not saying anything he didn't absolutely have to. Not that that was new. He was also still coughing. Jay noticed the end of a roll of Hall's lozenges sitting on the dash next to the radar detector. They didn't seem to be doing Kay a great deal of good.

He pulled into one of the magical parking spaces that seemed to appear all over town as soon as the LTD hove into view—a feature which Jay's Mercedes seemed to lack—and got out, heading for the newspaper stand close by. Jay remembered his incredulity the first time Kay'd brought him here to look for tips in the hot sheets. Time had proved Kay right, though—Jay had never once seen anything remotely useful in the respectable newspapers, but the _Enquirer _and the _Weekly World News_ could be counted on to provide important information.

"Here," Kay said, tossing a copy of _National Enquirer_ onto the LTD's hood. "'Bizarre Mystery Lights Terrify Motorists On Verrazano Bridge.'"

"More Erlians?"

"Hole in one. And they've been playing around in Jersey, too, apparently. We got a long day ahead of us, kid." Kay coughed, gathering up the papers, and slid behind the wheel.

Jay sighed. It could be worse. They'd only heard "Rapture" four times so far. He got in, unfolding a map of the area, and drew a couple of Xs over the possible sightings. Beside him, Kay lit the Ford's engine, then leaned back and fished a pack of Camels out of his pocket. Jay stared. "You quit," he said. 

Kay laughed a little. "Five or six times, Slick," he said. "Didn't I tell you?" He lit up and pulled the car back out into traffic, smoking no-hands with the elegance of long practice. "Robin Williams once said it, in a movie. 'There are two kinds of people in the world; smokers and non-smokers. Find out which one you are, and be that.'" He flicked ash out of the LTD's window.

Jay blinked. Philosophy from Kay? _Robin Williams_ philosophy? "You trippin, man. Those things'll kill you."

"Eh," Kay said. "Everything's gonna kill me. Air, water, sunlight. What're you gonna do?" He took another drag and coughed out smoke.

"See?"

Kay impaled him with a glare and went on smoking, piloting the car through midtown traffic with absent ease. The 8-track segued from "Rapture" to "Heart of Glass" for the seventh time.

They reached the Verrazano Narrows bridge by midmorning and parked the LTD by the side of the highway. Kay was on his third cigarette and second roll of Hall's. Jay was more and more convinced there was something Kay wasn't telling him, and just as certain there was no way he could ever get the older man to talk if he didn't want to.

They paced up and down, waving ionic detectors and spectrometers around the area. Everything looked cold until Jay got a spike about halfway across the span. "Kay," he called. "Got something. Same kind of trace as the garbage boat."

Kay came over, sunglasses on, and peered at the reading. "Yeah," he said after a moment. "Erlians. But......" he punched a few buttons on the device........"it's the same craft. Identical trace. So far we only have the one mining ship to worry about." He coughed a couple of times and flicked the cigarette end over the parapet. "That's only about a hundred thousand Erlians to find and get rid of."

"How big are these dudes?"

"About the same size as you," said Kay, looking him up and down. "Of course, they've got acid for blood and can become mostly invisible."

"Oh, great," said Jay sourly. "They can't fly, can they?"

"Not for long distances. Come on, we're due in New Jersey." Kay turned, coughing into his fist, and walked back to the LTD.

_Not for long distances?_ His day was just getting worse and worse.

Chris closed the throttle on the chartered launch and drifted, bobbing gently up and down on the opaque water. The reports of the red mist put it in this area—there was nothing here except for a kind of strange sheen on the surface, kind of like an oil slick, but an odd grayish colour. She wondered if the guys who'd reported the mist were teenagers. That would explain an awful lot, especially with the new and improved street drugs they had these days. 

Curiously she leaned over the railing and stretched out a hand towards the odd-coloured water, then thought better of it and picked up a jar from the deck, leant down and filled it with the stuff. _Maybe I can have it analyzed. It's probably just oil or diesel or somethi---_

A voice distorted by the power of a loudhailer cracked across her thoughts. "Step away from the railing of your vessel and keep your hands in the air," it said.

Slowly Chris turned to find a sleek black speedboat right behind her rented launch. A dark-haired woman in a familiar-looking black suit was standing in the bow, holding the loudhailer. She raised an eyebrow. _Not them again? The men........or rather people......in black. Maybe I'm not crazy after all._

She waited as the black speedboat pulled up alongside her vessel and the woman in the black suit climbed over and boarded. "Harbor Patrol," she said tersely. "Your ID and boating license, please."

Chris found her wallet and handed over the cards. "What's this about?"

"This is a restricted area," said the woman, squinting behind her sunglasses. "Civilians without special permits are not allowed." She was worried and she was in a hurry, Chris thought.

"I didn't see a sign," said Chris, as the woman handed her ID back and fished in her pocket, pulling out a silver laser pointer that was the twin of the one she'd seen yesterday. 

"May I direct your attention to this, Miss Redhart," said the woman with a trace of a smile. Obediently Chris looked at the red light, blinked as it flashed, and this time didn't bother to put on a blank look. 

"Sorry," she said after a moment. "It doesn't seem to work on me. Didn't yesterday—I saw two big green monster things having a fight in the Bronx, and these two guys in suits came and flashed us with one of those."

The woman was staring at her laser pointer. "Must be malfunctioning," she said, smacking it against her palm. "Please look here." She triggered it again.

Chris gave her an apologetic shrug. "You're with them, aren't you?" she said.

"With whom?"

"The men in black, or whatever they call themselves. Is this about the Erlians?"

The woman looked positively ill. She took off her Ray-Bans and stared at Chris; she had dark brown eyes, very pretty, fringed with naturally black lashes. "You," she said. "You...How do you _know_?"

Chris shrugged again. "I didn't until yesterday," she said, hoping this would help. "Then I just happened to catch a glimpse of that street fight, and saw your guys, uh, working. Does that light affect biometric dopamine regulation or something?"

The woman blinked, then gave her the hint of a smile. "Something like that. Look, since the standard-issue neuralyzer doesn't seem to work on you, I'm gonna have to ask you to accompany me back to headquarters so we can run some tests."

Chris held up her jar of scummy grayish water. "You could analyze this," she said. "Maybe it has something to do with the red mist thing. It's not byrus, is it?"

Once again the woman looked as if someone had taken her script away. She whipped out another little silver device and pointed it at Chris; after a moment, it beeped.

"You're human," she said, disappointed. "Not a telepath."

Chris grinned. "I got a plate in my skull. Maybe that blocks your neuro-photonic memory thingy."

The woman gave her a real smile in return. "Since we're gonna have to erase this anyway, and since you already seem to know way the hell too much about this—" She paused, stuck out her hand. "I'm Agent Elle."

"Christine Redhart. Nice to meet you." They shook hands; Chris felt a sudden jolt of the other woman's worry and her blatant curiosity as to what Chris was.

She didn't know why she wasn't bothered by any of this; perhaps it was just that she had always known the world was stranger than it let on, perhaps it was incipient insanity, she didn't much care; but she instinctively liked Elle, and she was dead curious. Maybe they'd find it impossible to erase her memory. Maybe they'd have to kill her.

Somehow, that didn't frighten Chris.

She stepped onto the black boat at Elle's request, watching as one of her black-suited companions piloted her launch away "to be decontaminated." "What's the contamination?" she asked, perching on the rail as the speedboat roared to life. "_Is_ it byrus, or something like it? A spore?"

Elle sighed. "I think so. I.......kinda had a hunch it might have something to do with the Erlians. You found out about them how?"

"The Net," Chris said simply. "You'd be surprised to find out how much true stuff there is out there."

"No," said Elle. "I don't think I would be."

"So is this dangerous?" She waved the jar.

"I don't believe so, not in that form, but as an airborne particulate, maybe. I have a suspicion it's a parasite of some kind. Looking for hosts."

Unbidden, an old line from an old novel lurched into Chris's head, and she found she was thinking again about the man in the sunglasses and the strange sourceless worrying. _You would not understand. He is different. He drinks the red sky for his evening wine._

Drinks the red sky.

"And you were here a week after the report........why? Because you think it might have found one?"

Elle scowled at her. "You _sure_ you're not a telepath?"

Chris thought seriously. "I don't quite know. Lots of weird things happened after the accident." Elle looked politely curious. "I was hit by a car," she explained, pointing to the scar hidden under her hair. "Depressed skull fracture, broken ribs, broken arm. They fixed the skull with a plate and told me I might have seizures or migraines, the latter of which proved true. But I've been having weird-ass dreams ever since, and I get......feelings, I suppose you'd call them, that I can't explain. Like I know what someone's going to say....."

"...before they say it?" Elle finished. "I definitely want to run some tests on you."

Chris shrugged. "As long as you don't have to kill me to make sure I don't tell."

"I don't think that's going to be a problem," said Elle, and gave her another smile, small but genuine. They roared across the harbor, heading toward Battery Park. 

In New Jersey, Jay and Kay weren't having nearly so much luck. There were trace readings of an Erlian ship all up and down the turnpike, but nothing concrete enough for them to check which ship it was or how long ago it had been there. Jay had flipped off the 8-track once and turned it back on a few minutes later; it was harder to listen to Kay's horrible hacking cough than it was to hear Debbie Harry telling everyone, for the thirtieth time, to call her on the telephone. Kay was beginning to sound seriously rough. He'd run out of cigarettes some time before, and was now also out of Hall's. He wasn't saying much—not that he could, since he was coughing nearly continually--merely cruising up and down the turnpike with all the LTD's scanners on, and while it wasn't really all that hot in the car with the windows open, he'd _taken off his jacket_ and rolled up his sleeves. Jay was beginning to think maybe he should call in the backup to find out what the hell was happening to his partner.

For the fifth time, he said, "Kay, man, look, I think we better head back. You sound like shit."

"I'm fine," said Kay, a palpable untruth. He coughed deeply and made a face, wiping his mouth, and Jay went cold all over as he saw a gleam of wet scarlet on his hand. 

"Holy _shit_, Kay."

"I'm—" He couldn't finish the sentence; a fit of helpless coughing doubled him over, and it was a good thing they were already on the shoulder, because he lost control of the car. They were only going about thirty, and it was easy enough for Jay to reach over and grab the wheel and emergency brake, bringing the LTD to a stop with its flashers on. Kay fumbled with the door, one hand to his mouth, and got it open as another, heavier fit shook him. He leaned out, hanging on to the door; Jay figured he was about to throw up—_what the hell was _happening _to him?_—but he didn't; he just gasped in a deep ragged breath and began coughing again, too hard and too deep, unable even to breathe between the spasms. It sounded _awful_, as if Kay's lungs were shredding themselves to pieces with each cough. He leaned over and put a tentative hand on his partner's heaving shoulders, and saw with growing horror that there was a spreading puddle of blood on the concrete by Kay's side of the car.

Without another word he reached for the comlink switch. "Zed," he said. "Emergency. It's Kay."

Zed frowned as Jay tilted the dash lens to widen its field of view, taking in Kay, now slumped back in his seat, hands pressing his chest, as his coughing slowly subsided. The head of MIB let out a string of expletives that made Jay, an ex-NYPD cop, blink. "I'm alerting the backup crew. Helicopter will be with you in about two minutes."

"Good," said Jay, and racked the mike with a hand that shook a little. "Holy _fuck_, Kay......what's _wrong _with you?"

"Dunno," Kay rasped, wiping away some of the blood with his sleeve. "Never happened before."

"Damn, man," said his partner weakly. "You scarin me. Just, uh, try and relax."

Kay opened his eyes and gave him sixty percent of a glare. "If you say _one word_ about cigarettes, Jay," he gasped, "I am gonna do something horrible to you. With a Cricket."

Jay felt a little better. 

Elle had just gotten Chris hooked up to the neurological testing apparatus when the alarm sounded throughout the medical bay: incoming emergency. Chris noticed that the other woman had gone dead white.

"Is this what you were scared of?" she asked quietly.

Elle nodded. "I have to go." She flipped on the machinery and the hum of a CAT scanner surrounded Chris as Elle hurried off, white coat flapping over her uniform suit.

They brought Kay in on a stretcher, all the agents silent and grim; this was one of the founding fathers they had here with a massive pulmonary hemorrhage, and everyone was scared. Elle felt herself snap right back into being a doctor, yelling orders, hooking up oxygen and dextrosaline and blood, trying hard to think of the man she was working over as just another patient. That was the problem with Kay: people got.......attached....to him. She forced herself into professional distance. God, this had to have been going on for _days_, how had he let himself get this sick before coming in for help? Again, the question answered itself: he was Kay. He didn't consider little things like illness anywhere near as important as the job. As far as she knew he'd never taken one sick day off work as long as he'd been with MIB, which was a really, really long time. 

Slowly she began to understand what was happening. It was almost funny, in a deranged kind of way: she'd seen an X-Files episode with a similar plot once, and she thought she'd read something like it in a Stephen King book. Kay had inhaled immature spores--or something like spores—which were perfectly suited to growth in the medium of the human lung, and were multiplying like crazy. And eating. And burrowing. God knew how much damage was already done—he sounded like he was in the final stages of TB. She put him on full-spectrum antibiotics—going right past the tame ones all the way to vancomycin—and full supportive therapy, but until she could stop the things—the alien lifeforms—from growing and multiplying, Kay's time with the agency would be over in a couple of days at the most.

Hours later, after starting a comprehensive battery of lab tests on what she had found and on the sample of the harbor water, Elle stripped off her gown, mask, and gloves, and trudged back to the testing facility, where one of her subordinates had finished with Chris and was collating the readings.

"What do we have?" she demanded, feeling old and worn out and as if she'd been doing the wrong job for far too long.

The young doctor looked up. "Something really weird. She seems to be a natural telepath."

"Something got activated with the cranial trauma?"

"I think so. There's brain activity here I've never seen before."

"Neuralyzer doesn't do shit to her," Elle said. "Keep her isolated for observation. I have to talk to Zed."

As she was leaving, the young MIB doctor said quietly "How is he?"

Elle almost, almost burst into tears, but controlled it. "Stable," she said. "He's stable, for now. It's some kind of spore or parasite. It's growing."

"Then.......?"

She nodded. "We have to find a way to stop it."

Out in the thick evening, the New York Harbor rippled away to itself as if everything was perfectly normal. On the face of things, this was true. The only evidence that things weren't quite what they seemed was the area of water, about three times the length of a football field, that was slightly depressed, as if something large and invisible was floating on it.

Inside the Erlian mining vessel, all was good. They'd begun refueling once the terrans in black with their flashy equipment and surface craft had gone away—there was some concern that their presence had been detected, but the Erlian captain dismissed the reports out of tentacle. Terrans were dumb, he maintained. Besides, they had a cloaking device. What could go wrong? The thirty or so highest officers were having a banquet to celebrate their arrival on the third planet of the system, and they'd already got through sixteen amphorae of Lucidian bing wine, so the general mood in the mining ship was one of pleasant unconcern.

This was bad, in some respects. For instance, it meant that they weren't paying attention when the control room sensors picked up the presence of non-Erlian lifeforms aboard.

It had been a long four million light-years, even with the state-of-the-art Krauz-Valloran stardrive, and this part of space had a _lot_ of debris floating about in it. Almost half the colony of tiny reddish microzoans that clung to the hull had been wiped out by space dust. When they'd first buzzed this planet, some cycles before, even more of them had been blown off the hull by the abrupt transition from hyperlight to sublight speed, and the colony's hive-mind knew those members were dead. Most of them. They had been getting strange mental images of repletion and growth, as if some of the lost ones had found an ideal host in which to multiply and feed. 

That wasn't their priority, however. Their priority was to get inside the Erlian vessel, and, in the words of a famous Arquillian general, fuck their shit up.

They were a little-known species generally called the Silar; their immature, sporozoidal form was comparable to a speck of red dust, but they travelled in colonies huge enough to build reefs of red silicaceous material out of their tiny cemented-together skeletons. Older Silar settlements were entirely covered in this reef material; in certain far-flung sectors of the galaxy it was thought that the Silar had built themselves planetoids out of their discarded bodies, although this had never been conclusively proved. They communicated via low-level telepathy; their intelligence was a hive mind, a sum of its parts. And they hated the Erlians with a passion.

It had been the Erlians who had destroyed the Silar's original home planet on one of their abortive quests for minerals and metals, and it had been due to this destruction that the Silar had been forced to evolve into their current tenacious parasitic form in order to survive. Part of the Silar collective intelligence bore a grudge against the Erlians because of that, and when a massive Erlian mining ship happened to drift through an asteroid field inhabited by several Silar swarms, the tiny creatures took their opportunity to stick themselves to the ship and wait for the right time to attack.

Because the Silar were, in their own way, deadly. They could lie dormant for thousands of years, merely a reddish crust on the surface of a piece of space debris, but once a warm, living host was presented to them, it took about a week for them to mature from the speck-of-dust stage to the full-size armored polychaetic worm stage. The swarm stuck to the Erlian hull was looking forward to this metamorphosis, and what it would do to their hosts. Silar infestation was kind of like a combination between having silicosis and having massive angry tapeworms thrashing about in one's insides. A pleasant warm feeling of anticipation swirled through the colony's mind.

They must've forgotten her, Chris thought, getting bored with doodling on a notepad at last. The enormous building had gone quiet; footsteps echoed along the corridors still, but fewer of them, and there was a general feeling of hushedness and tension.

She slipped out of the exam room, still wearing the paper gown that opened up the back to reveal her ass to whoever was looking, and wandered down the white corridor in search of some answers. She really, _really_ wanted a cigarette, but she bet they did horrible things to you for smoking in a place like this.

This place was _huge_. Much bigger than it looked from the outside—it had to take up almost three blocks, easy—and she bet she was on camera somewhere, even though she couldn't make out any lenses watching her. Still, no alarms were going off, and nobody showed up to menace her or order her back to the exam room.

She came to a half-open door, from which a chatter of nasal voices and a faint aroma of coffee and spice spilled into the hall, and on an impulse peeked round the door. 

Four or five wormy things that looked vaguely insectoid as well as vermiform were clustered around a coffee machine, smoking at least one cigarette per wormy-thing hand, and talking nonstop in a language Chris didn't recognize except for the occasional English expletive. One of the worms glanced over at the door and saw her.

"_Di wana wannga_," it said, and the others turned to look. The timbre of the conversation changed from shooting the breeze to mild lechery. "Ey, baby."

"Hi," said Chris, giving them a little wave. "What are you?"

"Vermars," said another worm, grinning—at least she thought it was grinning. "Once you go worm, that's what you'll yearn."

In spite of herself, this made her laugh. "Can I have some coffee?"

This made the worms—sorry, the Vermars—grin even wider, and two of them went positively pink with interest when she turned and they caught a glimpse of her butt. She found she didn't care—there was something comforting, something unthreatening and familiar—in the room, something which made her feel more at ease than she'd done all day. The fact that these creatures weren't remotely close to being human didn't even bother her.

She realized she was picking up on their.....what? thoughts? Feelings? Whatever it was, it made her feel better. "Sorry to intrude," she said, thanking one of them as it handed her coffee. "I'm lost." She looked longingly at the pack of Marlboros on the counter, and one of the worms lit one for her, which almost made her cry with surprise and gratitude.

They chattered happily away about how she was safe with them and how they were big heroes, they'd saved MIB headquarters from the evil Kylothian neural root thing, and only then thought to ask her who she was and what she was doing there.

"I'm not sure," she said apologetically. "I mean, I'm Christine, Elle brought me in earlier, because the neuralyzer doesn't work on me and they wanted to do some tests. They say I'm telepathic."

The worms were interested. "You are?"

"I guess so. I think it's cause of the plate in my head." She dragged on the Marlboro.

This fascinated them, and she had to spend a few minutes bending over so they could all rap on the metal plate in her skull and then shake their knuckles and curse. After that, they were fast friends, and even offered Chris a donut from what they called their secret stash. She hadn't realized how hungry she was, having ignored breakfast and lunch, and it was now seven in the evening, according to her watch. Just as she wondered what the hell the emergency was that had had Elle so worried, the woman herself stepped into the room.

"Shit," she said. "What are you doing here?"

The worms chattered about how cool she was; Elle ignored them with what looked like the ease of long practice. "I'm sorry," Chris began. "I..."

Elle sighed. "I forgot about you. You must be starving. Come on, I'll find something for us to eat."

Chris put out her cigarette and followed her, waving good-bye to Neeble, Gleeble, Iggy and Mannix, who whistled at the sight of her retreating backside. She scowled. "I hate these exam gowns."

Elle jerked as if shaken. "Shit. Yeah. Of course we gotta get you some clothes. You...." She squinted at Chris. "What are you, a size two?"

"One and a half actually. But I have big feet."

Elle gave her a tired grin. "Come on, I think we may have something that'll fit."

3

**Elle** and Chris, now neatly attired in a pair of black suit pants and white shirt, sat at a white table in MIB's grey-and-white staff canteen and ate surprisingly good calzones ("We got aliens running the cafe here just like in the rest of the city," Elle had told her) and talked. Chris felt the waves of tension and worry coming off the other woman like heat, but waited until they'd finished eating before giving her a direct stare and asking simply "What's going on? Why are you—and the others we passed—walking around looking like someone just shot the President?"

Elle stiffened and gave her a stare right back. "You don't know. Of course. But..." She let the sentence trail, implying that if Chris was a telepath she would already have a good idea. 

She looked at the civilian with a critical eye. Not bad—smart, certainly, and with a good foundation in biology and chemistry—possibly some med training, she hadn't asked—and, more importantly, the total ability to take in whatever the hell she'd been shown without having a nervous breakdown. The headquarters itself was enough to do that to some people. They felt like they were having an acid flashback to some awful time in the Sixties when white formica ruled the world.

As Elle watched, Chris's eyes suddenly changed color as the pupils dilated wide, reducing the grey to a thin silver ring around the black, and contracted again, several times, almost too fast to see. Before Elle could say any of the four-letter words at the tip of her tongue, Chris blinked and shook her head as if to clear it, and said "It's him, isn't it. The one who works with the hot black guy. Something happened to him. Something awful."

Elle took a deep breath, but Chris cut her off again, her eyes pulsing once more. "......The red mist. Spores? Something like spores—growing........." She paused and closed her eyes, apparently trying to catch something. "Kay. His name's Kay, isn't it? He's......" She trailed off.

Elle finished her drink in a hurry. "Tell me," she said. "Can you actually talk to people in their heads? I mean, like hold a conversation?"

Chris shrugged and gave her a wry smile. _I don't know. Is it working?_

Elle's eyes went wide and she shuddered at the sudden invasion of her mind. "Okay," she said shakily. "Good. Don't......uh....do that again."

"It's weird, isn't it?" Chris rubbed at her temples as if her head hurt. "For a while I thought I was nuts. I didn't know if I was thinking things or saying them out loud."

Elle nodded. She'd seen and heard weirder. The other woman was staring at her and for a moment it occurred to her that Chris looked a lot like the young Debbie Harry.

"You'd better tell me everything," said Chris, quietly.

They stood in the IC unit, gloved, gowned, capped, and looked down at Kay, who was almost unrecognizable under the oxygen mask, the EKG leads, the tubes and monitors and instruments. There was something dreadfully, appallingly wrong with that image—for as long as Elle had known him, or known of him, Kay had been..........invincible. Most feared human in the galaxy. A legend. Not just a man, like this one lying in the high white bed, looking fragile and very vulnerable indeed. It was like seeing a superhero laid low, or something. It shouldn't be.

"What have you got him on?" Chris asked, muffled by the mask.

"Vancomycin and a couple other nasty ABs," Elle told her. "He's heavily sedated because of the pain. Full supportive therapy, CPAP oxygen, the whole deal. It's not doing a lot of good."

"It wouldn't," said Chris, and bent over Kay, closing her eyes. Elle thought she'd seen that flicker again, that weird convulsion of the iris and pupil. For a long time she was quiet, as if listening for something; the only noise in the unit was the rhythmic hiss-click of the respirators and the beeping of all the monitoring equipment. Elle realized the sound was just like listening to Darth Vader breathe, and had to suppress a horrified giggle.

Chris sighed and leaned on the bedrail. When she spoke her voice seemed to come from a long way away. "They're not......malicious," she said at last. "Not toward us. They want.......revenge....something to do with an old grudge against........." She shook her head. "They don't mean to hurt us. They're enjoying the host body, though; they think it's lovely in there, just what they need."

"Who are they?" Elle asked tentatively.

"......They.....it.....it's a collective.......Silar."

"Oh, shit," said Elle, noticed that Chris was swaying, and hurriedly made her sit down. "The Silar? How'd they get into Kay?"

Chris frowned, eyes still shut. "....harbor," she muttered. "boat......when the ship came out of hyperspeed.......blown off......."

Elle went cold all over. Of course. Kay had been out there in the red mist, in the Silar swarm—but so had at least four or five other people. What if they all......?

"Chris," she said urgently. "Do they have other hosts?"

There was a long pause before Chris spoke again. "......one.....maybe two....neither of them is as strong as Kay......"

Elle pulled her to her feet. "Come on," she hissed. "Those other people may be dying too."

They met Jay in the main hall as they hurried down to the Egg Screen. He stared at Elle, and then at Chris. "Who the hell are you?"

"She's possibly Kay's only hope. Jay, find out if any of the local hospitals have any recent cases of acute respiratory or GI collapse. Hurry."

Jay blinked at his ex-partner's tone, then nodded, squinting at Chris. "Weren't you there the other day when we broke up that fight in the Bronx?"

Chris nodded tiredly. "Your memory disruptor thing doesn't work on me."

Elle broke in. "Go!"

Jay went, leaving Elle to snap out orders to the dozen or so agents working at the desks. "Find all the information you can about the Silar and their relationship to the Erlians, their history, their weaknesses, their peculiarities. Step on it. You," she turned to someone else, "get me the neural-net amplifier from storage and set it up in Lab 4. You try and get the Galactic Congress on the line and tell them we're doing all we can. Someone else get Chris some coffee before she faints. Let's move it, we got peoples' lives at stake."

She didn't have to say, "Kay's life."

The neural net amplifier was a funny-looking crown of electrodes hooked up to something that looked like a Dr. Who prop, dials and gauges encrusting its surface. Chris's headache got worse just _looking_ at it. Nevertheless, she lay down on the couch and let Elle and a technician connect the leads to her skull, fighting down memories of test after test, surgery after surgery. They turned on the amplifier, and suddenly the world was a much bigger and more complicated place. Her mind felt....released, expanded, as if freed from some container much too small for it. Dimly she was aware of Elle talking to her.

"....should boost your range to the point where you can make clear contact with them—"

She fell down into soft yielding darkness and let her senses tick over while she felt the space around her with her mind.

Jay hurried up, waving reports. "I got two emergency-room admittances last night. Both with ARDS, one of them coughing up blood like.....like Kay was. Both of them were on that boat. Harbor Patrol."

"Shit," said Elle. "Tell the hospitals to put them on fullspectrum antibiotics and monitor them every minute. Anyone else got anything for me?"

One of the agents she'd set to researching the Silar looked up. "It's the Erlians they're after," he said. "Gotta be. They hate them, there was some incident where the Erlians were supposed to have destroyed the Silar's home planet and they've been cruising around looking for Erlians to destroy ever since."

Jay looked at Elle. "We're in deep shit because of the Erlians. The Galactic Something."

"Congress," she corrected. "The Erlians are here to mine illegally, and if we don't get them off-planet soon there's not gonna _be_ a planet for them to be on. The Congress is running out of patience."

Jay frowned. "So, lemme get this right, we have evil little parasitic aliens eating my partner alive who are really here to lay a smackdown on these _other_ aliens who are gonna get us all killed anyway."

"That's about the size of it," Elle said. 

"So I think," he continued, "that in this case we can stand back and let alien group A take care of alien group B for us."

"Well," Elle said, nodding, "it is in our mission statement not to interfere with interspecies interaction except in cases where our planetary interest is at stake."

Jay grinned an evil little grin. "So all we gotta do is get the bastards out of Kay and these other two guys and point them at the Erlians, yeah?"

"That's what Chris is trying to do." Elle rubbed her forehead. "I hate this, Jay. There's nothing I can _do_."

"Sure there is," he said. "You can help me paint a big ol' _Good Eats Here _sign on that mining ship, wherever the hell it is."

Elle gave him the ghost of a smile. "All you can eat, huh?"

"You got that right, baby."

Chris floated. It was very very noisy out here, the din of thousands upon thousands of minds going about their everyday business, thinking their thoughts and dreaming their dreams, totally unaware that anyone could pick up their most dirty secrets with ease. After what felt like hours she found what she was looking for.

It was a buzzing mind, a many-mind, and mostly what it was concerned with was anger and hunger, in equal portions. At first it ignored her.

_You are the Silar,_ she thought again. _You are here to destroy the Erlians._

That got a response. The thoughts flowed around her; it was like being inside a swarm of repeating mouths. _We are here to avenge ourselves._

I know, she told them, trying to imbue the thought with as much warmth and support as possible, despite the fact that the buzzing fury of them was making her feel ill. _And you shall. But you have three Terran hosts._

Yes. They are adequate for our needs.

But, Chris tried again. _Your reproduction and your consumption are destroying them. We wish to help you achieve your goals, but we cannot allow our people to be killed._

The Silar seemed puzzled, swarming around her. _You are Terran?_

Yes.

But you touch our mind. Terrans have no such skill.

I'm special. I'm the only one my people have who can communicate with you.

You are an ambassador?

In a way, she thought. _My people will stand aside and allow you to complete your revenge if you release your Terran hosts. Otherwise......_She let the thought trail off and let her mind fill with images of explosions and furious burning death. She had no real idea what the MIB would do to them if they killed Kay and the other two humans. Nothing good.

The swarm pulled back a little, its reddish tint darkening. She wondered what that meant. It seemed to confer with itself, buzzing around her. Finally it seemed to make a decision.

_We have no quarrel with the Terrans. Our enmity is toward the Erlians alone. We will relinquish the Terran hosts if your people give us transport to the Erlian craft._

Chris fought for control; her headache was growing, pounding down deeper and deeper inside her skull. _The hosts have been considerably....damaged, _she said. _Is there anything you can do to help them?_

Damaged?

She shuddered._ When your people......feed...on a host, it is damaged. _

The swarm conferred again. _We have the ability to revert to our former state, _it told her, _and your cellular matrices are crude and easy to manipulate. Do you ask that we repair them?_

Yes.

Then you will, in return, give us further assistance.

Chris was dizzy. _What further assistance?_

We require a ship capable of breaking out of this planet's gravity well.

Chris didn't have the slightest clue if MIB had any random spaceships lying about, but she didn't hesitate. She was beginning to feel slightly delirious. _Certainly_, she told the Silar. _Stickshift or automatic?_

We do not understand.

My apologies. A poor Terran joke. Where do you wish us to deliver this spaceship?

We will return to collect it once the enemy is no more.

Very well, she told them. _Thank you for your cooperation._

The swarm seemed to curl around her briefly and faded from her consciousness. She managed to crack her eyelids open, then shut them again as the light of the lab speared through her brain. Elle was bending over her, demanding to know what had been said.

"They'll let the hosts go," she croaked, "if we get them to the Erlians and let them have their revenge......and they want a spaceship."

"A spaceship?" Elle repeated.

"Something that'll be able to get out of this planet's gravity well," she said. The room was shifting in and out of vision.

She vaguely heard Elle say "Is that all?" as the room shrank and dwindled to a pinpoint. She had just about enough time to be glad she was passing out, because she had the mother of all migraines, before the world shut off for her.

As morning dawned, Elle worked fast, getting agents into the two hospitals to effect the transfer of the Silar from their hosts into some form of transportable medium and getting someone to pull an impounded Gadon Systems S-class light freighter from storage. Jay looked at it with disgust as two agents carried it into the main hall. It was the size of a large refrigerator carton, and about as ugly. "That the best we can come up with?"

"It's the most reliable craft we've got currently. The Kylothian Class C battle cruiser is prettier—and smaller—but its hyperdrive motivators have a habit of conking out on you, and we really don't want the Silar thinking we handed them a lemon, do we? Also, everyone hates Kylothians, and giving someone a ship belonging to a Kylothian is kind of like driving a Gestapo staff car into Jerusalem. Not smart." She patted him on the shoulder with a tired grin and hurried off back to the IC.

Jay had to admit she had a point. Upstairs, Zed had just arrived, demanding to be briefed on the situation. The woman—Chris—who had done their negotiating for them was still out cold, and Elle had given orders to leave her undisturbed. He climbed the steps to Zed's office at his peremptory gesture, and told his boss all he knew. He was relieved to see Zed grin a nasty grin not unlike his own at the thought of the Silar taking care of the Erlians for them.

"What about......." Zed let the sentence trail off. Jay had a happy answer for this one too. 

"Kay's off the respirator," he said, "and apparently the other two hosts are recovering fine. We've got the Silar from them already. Elle's working on Kay right now."

Zed gave him an unreadable look. "This girl you say's a telepath. What does she do for a living?"

"No clue, boss. All I know is the neuralyzers don't work on her and she was giving Kay the eye when we left that street fight in the Bronx."

"Huh." Zed sat down in his official egg chair. "I want to see her when she comes to."

Jay raised an eyebrow. "You're not thinking of..."

Zed shrugged. "We got more important things to do right now. Go on, Junior."

Jay went, scowling. Five years on the job and they still called him Junior.

Elle had just about finished the extremely unpleasant task of getting the Silar out of Kay and into their transport container. She doubted Kay had enjoyed it that much, either. He was still only half-conscious, but he was breathing more or less normally now, recovering from the transfer of the parasites, and his fever had finally begun to drop. _Systemic response to invasion,_ she thought to herself. _I wonder how much damage they really did?_

She decided she didn't want to know, turning away from the bed and sealing the container. _It'd be so easy just to toss this in the incinerator, and I'd like to,_ she thought, remembering the way Kay had been when they brought him in, burning up, white shirt spotted and stained with brilliant pulmonary blood, lips blue with hypoxia, dying. _But we made a deal. And these are some little interstellar spores I don't want to piss off._

"Elle," croaked a voice from behind her, hoarse and without much strength. She turned to find Kay looking at her from beneath half-closed lids. "What the hell happened?"

She couldn't repress a big goony grin of relief, hurrying over to the bed. "It's a long story," she told him. "How do you feel?"

Kay gave her a weak version of the Kay Look. "Peachy," he said, after a moment. 

"Good to have you back, sir," said Elle, still grinning. "Real good."

Kay raised an eyebrow. "How long have I been out?"

"Day and a half. We....I.......thought you were......" She shook her head. "Never mind. You're out of danger."

"Clarify," said Kay, succinctly. She couldn't help feeling a warm surge of pleasure—that was typical, normal Kay, never using two words when one would do, ordering rather than asking. 

"Not now," she told him. "I have to go help save the world again. I'll explain everything later."

Kay scowled, but nodded and closed his eyes again. Elle hurried out, clutching the spore containers, that idiotic goony smile still on her face.

The harbor was still deceptively peaceful. Inside the cloaked Erlian vessel, the crew was beginning to come to, and wishing they hadn't; Lucidian bing wine leaves one _hell_ of a hangover. Their problems were only beginning, though. The captain was rubbing at his oddly-shaped skull and trying to get the control panel into focus when he realized the fuzziness on the screen was actually a thin layer of reddish dust.

_Not_.......

He didn't get a chance to scream. The dust swarmed up his tentacles and flowed into his eyes, his aural apertures, his mouth. All around him the other Erlians found themselves surrounded by waves upon waves of Silar.

Soon the only noise in the control room was the muffled ripping sound of things being dismantled while still alive.

They worked fast. By the time Jay and Elle got there with the rest of the Silar, most of the Erlian officers were extremely dead, but there were still enough to give everyone second helpings. Neither agent could look at the carnage for very long; Jay was used to the grossest of the gross, and Elle had been a deputy medical examiner before joining the agency, but neither of them could stomach the Silar's revenge on their age-old enemies. They got back in their boats and hurried away, waiting for the parasites to come and claim their ship and get the hell off their planet.

Chris had woken up with the remains of a Force 10 migraine—luckily the nausea seemed to have given this one a miss, and she could just about see out of both eyes—and lurched out of bed to find an aspirin, or some morphine, or a rock she could hit herself on the head with. She stumbled out into the main medical bay, squinting around for likely-looking bottles, and started randomly opening doors in the hope of finding anything other than blank white walls with no sign of a medicine cabinet anywhere. _What the hell kind of medical unit doesn't have any drugs? Maybe I'll just bang my skull against this wall._

That wall was a door. Someone said "Come in."

The shock seemed to make some of the pain go away, and she was already opening the door when she realized she had no right to be there. Too late. The sight of the man in the bed made her go cold and hot all over.

He was sitting up, looking tired and a bit annoyed. "Who are you?" he demanded, and then squinted at her. "Wait. I never forget a face. I've seen you before......a Gurengi-Vurlan fight.....couple days ago." He frowned. "Civilian."

"Yes," said Chris. There didn't seem to be much else to say."You're alive."

Kay raised an eyebrow and gave her a look. She didn't even flinch. He was impressed. "Yes," he agreed. "Who _are_ you, and what are you doing here? This is a restricted area."

"Christine Redhart. I.....um....got mixed up in this. Sorry. I'll go..." She trailed off, shutting her eyes tight as another spike of pain lurched through her head.

Kay swore, coughing. "Sit down before you fall down. What happened? What's wrong?"

She felt her way to the chair by the bed and fell into it. "Sorry. I........I don't feel very well. I didn't mean to come in here at all." It was really hard to see now, and the nausea was making a triumphant return performance. She realized how dumb she must look, which didn't make her feel one little tiny bit better.

Kay sucked in his breath sharply, which made him cough. He'd figured out why she was so familiar. The girl looked like Millius might if Millius had been born a human. But there was more—something terribly strong about her, stretched to a breaking point, something which caught and held his attention. 

She risked opening an eye. He was looking at her with a mixture of interest and sympathy, and something else she couldn't quite define. "You.....did something, didn't you?" he asked, not ungently. "Something big."

"I don't know," she said, simply. "I don't know anymore. I......oh fuck......." She had to get out of there before she started to cry. Or throw up. That was the last thing either of them needed. She didn't even want to think about some of the things she'd imagined she would say to him on their first meeting. It wasn't going anywhere near according to plan. 

She struggled out of the chair and made for the door. Vaguely she could hear Kay ordering her to wait, to sit down, to tell him what the righteous fuck had been going on around here, but she fled anyway, lost in the white corridors, until at last by sheer chance she came to the room she'd left, and—after being remarkably sick--curled up on the white bed and cried until she fell asleep.

"I can't explain it," said Elle, later, "nor do I really understand it, but it looks like her accident did something to her brain—made bits of it work that had never worked before. Bits that I think all human brains have. Her scans show a pattern of activity I've never seen, but the physical structure is unremarkable."

"So she can read peoples' minds?" Kay, his fever mostly gone, was still in bed, although it had taken a direct order from Zed to make him stay there. "Anyone's mind?"

"I don't think so. Not all the time. If she makes an effort she can get in, but it's not like she can hear what you're thinking 24/7. And she can talk in your head if she wants to."

Kay raised an eyebrow. "I see." He coughed. "And she...what, negotiated with the Silar in some kind of trance state? She convinced them to quit burrowing around in me?"

"That's what we think. She was out for a couple of hours, and when she came out of the trance, or whatever it was, she told us that they'd agree to let you and the other two go if they were allowed full access to the Erlian ship." She shuddered at that particular memory. "I'm sure we can find some way of erasing her memories of this whole incident. Somehow. I mean, the neuralyzer doesn't work because her thought impulses and her memories are stored differently from normal people's, but I'm sure if we study her brain a little more we can come up with some way to blank out this event."

Kay looked thoughtfully at her. "Is it necessary?" he asked after a while.

Elle blinked. "You mean let her keep the memory.....?" 

"Think about it. We've never had a telepath on staff before. Could be useful."

Elle had considered this. "I don't know. It's up to Zed, of course, but she's smart and she's flexible and she could deal with all of this shit being thrown at her without freaking out too badly........I mean, she figured out the Erlian thing on her own."

Kay raised the eyebrow again. "How?"

"The Internet." Elle shrugged. "We really gotta do something about the Internet."

Kay coughed. "Have you talked to Zed about this?"

"Not yet, he's still busy negotiating with the Galactic Congress to have Erlia moved to high-threat status. Oh, and the Silar sent us a nice thankyou note and have declared themselves on our side."

"Oh, good," he said wryly. With allies like that, who needed enemies? "What ship did you give them, anyway?"

"The Gadon S-class."

Kay grinned. "Not the one with the 'My Jawarian Slime-Grub Ate Your Honor Student' bumper sticker?"

Elle went red. "Oh, _shit._"

"Relax, kid, the Silar don't speak Jawarian. And even if they did, I doubt they'd mind that sentiment." He sighed. "This girl. You think she's got what it takes?"

Elle looked at him for a moment. "Yeah," she said. "I really do."

He nodded. "Make it so, then."

"When she's better." 

"What do you mean?" There was a note in Kay's voice she hadn't heard before. "She's sick?"

"No, not really. The effort of the trance gave her a world-class migraine, and she's been throwing up for a while."

"I see," he said quietly, lacing his fingers behind his head. Elle peered at him, wondering just what he was thinking. It was very hard to tell.

"Why do you ask?"

"No reason," he said, going back to impassive mode. Elle sighed. There was no point trying to chip away at _that_ facade, it was famous. She got up to go.

"You can probably get up tomorrow if your temperature's normal," she told him sternly. "Just take it easy for a while, okay? Your lungs are still healing."

He gave her a glare for her very own, which she ignored with practiced ease. "I'll ask Zed about her. See what he thinks."

"Fine." It was a typical Kay dismissal, blunt and brusque and final, but Elle thought he was planning something. She gave a mental shrug. Useless to worry about it; there was no way on earth or several other planets to get Kay to reveal his innermost thoughts. Lots of individuals had tried.

When Chris woke up again, she felt worlds better—limp and weak from the vomiting and the pain, but able to think again. For a moment she wondered where she was, as she was staring at a white ceiling; then she realized she was being watched, and let her gaze drift down to the occupant of the chair beside her bed, and both memory and self-disgust came gleefully back to her. She shut her eyes again, hoping he'd go away. He didn't. 

"So," said Kay conversationally. "You're a telepath."

Damn the man, she thought. The others must've _told_ him already, what could he possibly want from her? "So they say," she answered dully, opening her eyes again and pointing them at her lap, where her hands were clasping each other hard enough to make her knuckles white.

"What am I thinking?" he inquired with a look of polite interest. He was back in the suit, immaculate black and white, hair combed neatly back. He still looked a little pale.

"You can't honestly expect me to go into _your_ mind," she said, feeling far too wrung out to deal with him.

"Why not?"

"You're _Kay_," she said, as if this explained everything. Elle had had time to fill her in on a little of his background, and added to her already-existing feelings, it was enough. "That'd be like someone trying to read, I dunno, Batman's mind or something. Presumptuous."

He laughed. He actually laughed, although it turned into a cough. "Don't think I've ever been compared to Batman before," he said thoughtfully. "A Blues Brother with a hangover, yes."

She blinked. What the hell did he want?

He stiffened a little and stared at her. "I heard that," he said.

Mortified, she covered her face with her hands. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not good at this yet." _How much else has he gotten? How many times have I failed to shield? _

Kay gently reached over and drew her hands away with quiet gallantry. "Stop apologizing. We don't apologize, as a rule; we neuralyze."

"We?" _How the hell am I supposed to carry on a conversation with him when he's holding my hands? Can he hear me now? What does he_ want? _What does he mean, we?_

"The Men in Black, genius."

She goggled. _Me? _"You.....I mean.......you can't honestly.............._me_?"

"Yes, you," said Kay with a touch of impatience. He was still holding her hands. "I'm officially recruiting you. What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a teacher's assistant at the university," she said automatically, brain still reeling. "Bio." He nodded. 

"Any dependents? Husband...?" He peered at her ringless left hand with, for him, uncharacteristic interest. "Significant other? Anyone to miss you if you disappear?"

"No," she murmured. "No one."

Kay gave her a rather complicated smile. _He's still holding my hands._ "That makes it easier on you. We can't actually neuralyze you anyway, not just yet—but if you don't want to join, we can figure out a way to make all this never have happened, and you can go back to your normal life."

"I don't think so," she said quietly, and noticed that her fingers seemed to be curling themselves around his. _What the hell am I doing? _ "It's as if all this is the expected result of something that happened a long time ago. I'm _supposed_ to be here. I felt more alive the last few days than I have in years—even before the accident." _He better not be hearing my thoughts right now._

Kay said nothing for a few moments, looking down at her hands, tracing the pattern of veins on the back of them absently with his thumb. It made it very difficult for her to think at all. "Yes," he said at last. "It's exciting, isn't it."

She looked up at him. "You......? How did you join?"

He coughed wryly. "I was drafted. Back when the aliens first made contact, I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."

_So did I,_ she thought. _I was in the wrong place at the wrong time when you first appeared. And I don't think I want to be in the right place anymore._

Kay was looking at her thoughtfully. "You smoke?" he asked.

She blinked. "Yeah. I'm trying to quit."

"Aren't we all. Get dressed and meet me in the main hall in five minutes."

She blinked again, aware that she looked like an idiot, and managed to say "Okay."

The suit was a perfect fit, the pants slim and elegant, the jacket tailored around her curves—which, she had to admit, were pretty good for a woman as small as she was. Im_poss_ible to find clothes, which was why she was sure this had been made to measure. _When did they measure me?_

She didn't actually want to know. It took her two attempts to get the tie tied, because she hadn't worn one since grade school, but she thought it looked okay when she was done. There was a watch, too. A ladies' black-dial Hamilton Ventura. A real one.

Shit.

She stared at herself in the little locker mirror on the wall and made a face. She thought she looked a bit like someone dressed up in her sister's school uniform—in something a little too sophisticated for her. Never mind, Kay was waiting for her, and even her sister's school uniform was a damn sight better than a paper dress that opened up the back. And—it did make the most of her shape, such as it was.

Chris squared her shoulders, put on the black shiny shoes—also a perfect fit—and walked out into the hallway. Immediately her nervousness vanished—everyone else seemed to accept that she belonged there, nobody stared, nobody said a word except to nod to her in passing—except for Jay and Elle, who were on their way to Zed's office, and who gave her genuinely friendly smiles. "Lookin' sharp, girl," Jay told her. 

What was it about those two....? Ah, yes. That peculiar bluish aura, the way they walked a little closer to each other than partners generally did. "Thanks. You too."

Elle grinned. "Knock 'em dead, Chris," she said, and hurried on up the stairs.

Chris began to smile a bit as she came into the main hall, for the first time not feeling like a tourist, and looked around for Kay.

He was impossible to miss, even in the ubiquitous penguin outfit; there was something about him that drew the attention, even when he was just leaning mildly against a pillar with his arms folded, rather than saving the world or flashing away peoples' memories. He gave her a long cool look as she approached, and she felt some of her confidence ebbing away again.

"Hold still," he said, and deftly adjusted her tie. "There. You need practice."

She felt herself go pink, but something made her look up and meet his eyes, and they made her feel warm all over. He gave her one of those quick was-it-really-there smiles and gestured for her to follow him to the elevator.

They sat on a bench in Battery Park and smoked the last of his Camels. "Firstly," Kay said, not looking at her, "I'm apologizing for being rude to you before. I didn't know you had a migraine. I used to get them, and trust me, I know what they're like."

"It wasn't that bad," she said automatically, dragging on her cigarette. 

"Like hell. You looked like you were about to die. I've only ever seen one human being look that sick, and that's when I was driving him at one-thirty upside down through the Midtown Tunnel. What I wanted to tell you," he said mildly, "before you ran out of the room in tears, was that I appreciate your saving my ass. And of course everyone else's."

"Don't mention it," she said a little dizzily. "I'm glad I could help." _I want to be driving upside down in the Queens Midtown Tunnel at a hundred thirty with this man. Why is that?_

Kay scowled at her. It was a good scowl. "Would you quit with the 'I'm honored to be in your presence' attitude? Please?"

She blinked, and then grinned. "But I am."

"Well, then, pretend not to be. I got enough of that when I came out of retirement, little rookie agents running everywhere—'can I get your coffee, Agent Kay,' 'you're a legend, Agent Kay,' 'can I iron your newspaper, Agent Kay....'" He gave her a wry grin, letting smoke trickle from his nostrils in an inscrutable sort of way. "So quit it. I'm going to be training you, which means I drive, I select the weapons, I use the neuralyzer, I call the shots, I make up the fake names, and I get my own damn coffee. Oh, and I get to call you whatever I like, _slick_."

"What do _I _do?" said Chris, slowly beginning to enjoy herself. The atmosphere had cleared a bit; she still felt dizzy even being near him but some of the stiff awkwardness had faded. She felt almost as if she could play his game. She'd heard Jay bitching about being called son, sport, kid, slick, junior, tiger, and all the other diminutives Kay used; she, by comparison, was rather lightheaded with pleasure at being on "slick" terms with Kay at all. It was hard to believe that a week or so ago she'd never seen this man. Hard to believe that all this could have happened so _fast_.

"Follow and learn, Grasshopper," he said with a little grin. "And lighten up. I'm not gonna kill you." 

"Okay," she said, easily dismissing the thought of her pre-Kay life. "What was the Post Office really like?"

"I don't want to talk about it." He blew a series of smoke rings into the still air. There was that impassive look again. She smiled a bit.

"Come on, what was it like? Did you get to drive those weird jeeps with the right-side console?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Bet you looked really _good_ in those shorts and knee socks." She pictured this and grinned. Her confidence, as Janet Weiss would say, had increased.

"I _don't_," said Kay, "want to talk about it. _Slick_."

She grinned to herself all the way through orientation. Kay in Bermuda shorts. 

4

****

A few weeks later, Kay and Sea were sitting at a table in the Plaza, finishing lunch. "So she looks over at her husband again, and she says, she says "But honey, this one's eating my _popcorn!_" Kay finished, gesturing, and both of them laughed like fools. 

"That's a _lot_ better than the one about the rabbi, the priest and the salesman," Sea gasped. "You're lucky I didn't snort champagne out my nose." _Especially on this suit,_ she thought; it had been a gift from Millius, who thoroughly approved of Kay's new partner. Looked just like an ordinary MIB suit—perhaps better fitted—but had a whole host of interdimensional pockets in it, meaning she could carry several more weapons than any single 103-pound female had any right to. Kay liked it. A lot.

He regarded her, grinning. "Waste of champagne," he said. "Have some more."

She held out her glass. "So what's the plan this afternoon?"

"We check out that Kinko's on 45th and Hall where Jay says they're faking Reluthian work visas, then go bust up that illegal disguise shop in Greenwich Village." He poured the last of the Cristal into her glass.

"Slow day," she said. He shrugged. 

"You'll learn to appreciate them when you're older, kid," he told her. She smiled. They were going to have the "kid" conversation again, then. 

"Can I drive?" She knew her lines.

"When you grow up." He gave her a Kay Look. She ignored it. 

"Hey, I'm twenty-five," she said, grinning. He winced a bit.

"You do realize I'm more than twice as old as you?"

"Who cares?" she said, finishing her champagne, watching him over the rim of her glass. This was one of those moments where more could be said than was actually said out loud.

"Me," said Kay. "I'm getting fossiliferous here and I'd appreciate it if you didn't call attention to the fact."

Sea smiled. "On the planet of Balardine," she informed him, "age is considered far more desirable than youth. Balardinians don't consider themselves remotely mature till they're about eighty."

Kay raised an eyebrow. "We're not on Balardine."

"Who cares?" Sea said again, with a slightly different inflection, feeling the atmosphere carefully with her extra senses, and was rewarded by a slight widening of Kay's eyes, an odd little smile. Her insides did a strange flip-flop.

"Who indeed," he said and took out his wallet as the waiter arrived.

"Let me get this," said Sea, putting on her Ray-Bans. Kay stared for only a moment before cracking a smile and putting on his own. The waiter looked at them inquiringly.

"How would sir and madam like to pay?" he asked.

"That's a very good question," said Sea, taking the neuralyzer Kay handed her and setting it carefully, "and the answer to it is located right _here._"


End file.
